Tom Hiddleston has a lengthy feature in the new issue of Empire Magazine this week. And the feature is SO boring. I know you guys love CuddleHiddles and DancingHiddles and SnakeHipsHiddles, but I actually think Tom is trying to get away from that aspect of his fandom. Much like Benedict Cumberbatch finally had enough last year, Tom is trying to serious-up his image and not be so “silly.” Will it work? Maybe. But he’s putting me to sleep now. You can read the full Empire piece here. Some highlights:

Whether he read The Night Manager book: “I read the script first. I read episode one in April last year. And then I read the book. The script was only 60 pages; it was so brilliant. Jonathan Pine, this ex-soldier, so patient, charming, disciplined, completely hidden. A night manager in Switzerland. A man of service, a man of discipline. It was all so brilliantly constructed. That was clear. So I just jumped on as quickly as I could. Hugh Laurie and I kind of jumped on before the adaptation was complete.

The benefits of Englishness: “The book is amazing. It is amazing to act in any book adaptation, because a book gives you so many secrets and details that don’t necessarily get shot in an adaptation. They give you a cushion underneath everything. The detail in the character, the detail in the tone. What le Carré is so good at is unpicking something very specific about Englishness. That is almost part of why I think he wrote the novel. You can feel le Carré’s anger that someone who has had the benefits of an English education and an English upbringing is using that privilege to basically do the worst things imaginable. There is an anger in the book about that.”

Tom has daddy issues: “Doing this with Hugh [Laurie] has been amazing not least because it happens to be one of his favourite novels, and he has been trying to be in an adaptation of the novel for about 25 years. I think he wanted to play Jonathan Pine, many years ago. And his authority over the material has been an amazing thing to be around. The Pine-Roper relationship is really interesting because it is almost like a father-son relationship. They are quite similar in lots of ways: in manner, taste, experience and sophistication, they are cut from the same cloth. It is just that one has an unflinching moral sense of right and wrong, and the other, as le Carré writes, is the “worst man in the world”.

The hunger for more complicated spies: “Yes. There is stuff going on behind the curtain. And this kind of material appeals to that desire to see behind the curtain: what deals are being made? Who is in whose pocket? That is what our headlines are made up of now – when you see that high finance is in bed with politics, which is in bed with the media. You think, well, who is in with who? There are all these conflicts of loyalty and interests, and how does that play when the stakes are high? What do I know? I’m just an actor…”

[From Empire]

While I don’t doubt that the Pine-Roper relationship is supposed to have some father-son moments, that also seems to be a running theme with Tom’s filmography, and a Freudian would have a field day with Tom and how he’s drawn to certain projects. My eye also caught on Tom’s use of “privilege” to describe the Roper character’s education and upbringing, as if posh toffs just aren’t supposed to get into arms dealing because…they’re supposed to use their white, posh privilege for something else, I suppose.

Photos courtesy of ‘TNM’ and Fame/Flynet.